Sylvia Melland (1906-1993), painter and printmaker, was born in Altrincham, Cheshire. She studied at Manchester College of Art; Byam Shaw School of Art; Euston Road School with William Coldstream 1937-39; and at the Central School in London under Merlyn Evans 1957-60. She exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1944, and also with the Royal Society of Painter Etchers, the Womens International Art Club, and the Free Painters and Sculptors. Melland worked in France, Italy, Scandinavia, and Poland, and in 1961 joined the Roter Treiter Group of Printmakers in Munich. In her earlier years her work was figurative and she tended to favour painting still lifes and some landscapes. From the end of the 1950s she turned increasingly to abstraction and produced some especially fine prints which due to small edition numbers are not that widely known. Melland's work is held by a number of public institutions, including the Tate Gallery, the British Museum, Manchester City Art Galleries, Leeds City Art Gallery, Southampton Art Gallery, and New Hall College Cambridge.  In 1997 a retrospective show was held at The Boundary Gallery in London.